Sausage linking machines form long strands of sausage links. The links are created by stuffing a cylindrical thin wall casing with meat emulsion, and then portioning the filled casing to create the individual links. The casing material comes in the form of cylindrical sticks (called casings) that must be loaded into the sausage machines. When one casing is consumed, another must be loaded in its place. The casings are thirty feet or more in length but are compressed to a shirred telescopic condition so as to form a shirred casing of ten or twelve inches in length. When placed on a meat stuffing tube of the machine, the meat emulsion is extruded through a discharge end of the tube into the casing, which is progressively slidably removed from the outer surface of the tube as it is progressively being filled with meat emulsion. A clamping mechanism is typically used to release the shirred casings from the hopper into a position where they can be filled sequentially with meat emulsion.
A previous invention provided an improved method and apparatus for loading casings onto the stuffing tube of a sausage making machine, without the use of clamps or the like.
The principal object of this patent is to provide a method and apparatus for easily adjusting a casing hopper to load different diameters of casings onto the stuffing tube of a sausage making machine.
A further object is to do this by the action of just one lever.
A further object is to calibrate this adjustment so that the hopper can be set up prior to running the machine without testing with a casing
These and other objects will be apparent to those skilled in the art.